Farm in Peril – the plot
Beckstone Farm is in trouble and the farmer, Will Black, is in danger of landing in the debtor’s prison. The avaricious factor, Josiah Fitchet, arrives with Madeleine de Courtenay, grand-daughter of the titled but senile owner. Fitchet also brings a proposal that the debts be written off against her dowry. Neither Will nor Madeleine relishes this bargain, but both have major problems they wish to escape. Can they find a way to help themselves and each other, without being trapped in an unwanted marriage?
The Historical Background
In Queen Anne’s late and, by now, childless years, Jacobite objections still threaten the new united Great Britain. Religious intolerance, political unease and remnants of old beliefs like witchcraft survive. In covert government circles, perfidy and greed exist on an international scale.
It is also the beginning of centuries of increasingly bitter conflicts between landlords and their tenants. The owners wish to enclose common land which will leave the commoners dispossessed. Closer to home, poverty and squalor hover in the wake of Marlborough’s wars during the War of the Spanish Succession. Social turmoil also stirs at the approach of huge agricultural and industrial changes. The first mechanical machines for sowing seed are already under experimentation.
A Chance Find
The first spark for this story was the discovery of detailed plans and maps in a splendid local library. The Castle Howard estate in Northern England wanted to modernise a farm. The date on the plans was 1708. It listed the vegetables and cereals which Will and Madeleine planted on the fictional Nidderdale farm I have given them. I even sneaked in the turnip, which had just been imported from Holland by Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun for his Lothian farms. Somehow I forgot the new orange carrots, much tastier than the native white kind.
While investigating further, I fished out dozens of tomes from elsewhere in the library, from Churchill to, yes, Fletcher and his contemporaries. In no time I fell in love with the period. Beckstone, the farm, came alive in my imagination and Beckstone, the book, was in gestation.
